Workplace reviews and discussion: 泰歆科技有限公司

The colleagues are all very nice and easy to get along with.

The warehouse department provides sports drinks.

Taking leave is easy. Don’t expect too much from the bonuses; if you get one, consider it a bonus. Otherwise, there’s nothing standard.

The staffing is severely inadequate—there are essentially only enough people to fill each position, with no backup.

If you’re applying for a warehouse position, I don’t recommend applying for the container unloading position. If it’s the only opening left, I suggest negotiating the salary up to the top end of the range listed on the job bank.

Otherwise, it’s extremely poor value.

After the warehouse relocation, the container unloading site not only has no dock but is also outdoors. On sunny days, containers sit in the sun from early morning until sunset, not to mention during summer. Around noon, even the container walls are scorching hot, so you can imagine how hot it is inside.

Palletized containers would be manageable, but this company mainly handles 40-foot manually loaded containers, with occasional 20-foot containers. Almost all of them are unloaded by one person because the company has to pay additional demurrage if a container remains for more than seven days.

The seven days include weekends and the day the container arrives. In addition, the yard must be notified on the morning of the seventh day to have the empty container removed, so you’ll be expected to finish unloading each container within three days if possible.

Basically, the schedule is just enough for one person to unload the container without taking leave. After unloading, putting the goods into storage and shelving them is also your responsibility, so unloading plus put-away takes about 10 working days. Just pray that a container doesn’t arrive every week, because if one arrives every week, there’s no time to put away the goods—once one container is finished, the next one arrives.

The high-temperature environment is extremely physically demanding. If you get hired, try unloading one container and see for yourself.

Because the warehouse changed from a conventional floor-stacked warehouse to a high-bay warehouse, I recommend knowing how to operate not only a forklift but also a high-lift forklift and an order picker; otherwise, your work speed will be affected.

You may also be required to come to work during typhoons. Personally, I recommend not going in, because container unloading is outdoor work, and strong winds and heavy rain increase the risk of workplace injuries.

The annual leave calculation follows a calendar-year system rather than an anniversary-year system. You can look up the pros and cons yourself. Personally, I think it disadvantages new employees because after six months, you don’t receive three days—you receive a prorated amount.

I strongly recommend not working overtime. If you can avoid it, don’t do it, because the overtime pay calculations are impossible to follow.

Actually, it wouldn’t matter if the calculation were unclear when the amount favored employees, but the amount calculated using the formula provided by the Labor Bureau is lower.

Before the warehouse relocation, overtime pay was not even provided. Once, I had to unload a 20-foot container at the old warehouse. It had to be finished that day, and we also arrived late, so staff from sales and a driver came to help unload it. We finished about 40–45 minutes after the end of the workday.

But that overtime pay was missing from the following month’s paycheck. Although it was only a small amount, if even that isn’t counted, it’s rather disappointing…

There is no meal allowance or meal subsidy. Lunch is at your own expense, so remember to factor this into your salary negotiations.

If you already have warehouse experience and find that the employee in charge doesn’t understand warehouse operations or gives strange instructions, don’t blindly follow them. If anything happens, state clearly that you were acting according to their instructions and put the responsibility back on them.

Part of the warehouse is shared with the landlord, so be careful when operating vehicles and equipment. The landlord frequently rides or drives into the warehouse, so watch out for collisions. Those who come to collect their pay should protect themselves.

The landlord has also stored quite a few high-pressure gas cylinders in the warehouse. Having previously worked in a related industry, I believe this is illegal…

If you do get hired, pay extra attention to this issue yourself.

Overall, it’s mediocre at best.